


Like Clockwork

by tea_petty



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Partners to Lovers, Slow Burn, railroad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 19:52:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19280014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_petty/pseuds/tea_petty
Summary: Even when things go terribly wrong, Deacon and Wanderer function in perfect synchronicity; a seamless partnership, working together like clockwork.





	Like Clockwork

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-petty

Wanderer’s stomach cramped up, like a fist had clenched around that day’s lunch in an attempt to aid in digestion but had taken a bit of her stomach along with it instead.  She swallowed.  It wasn’t the first time she’d felt like this; but it was a feeling that never quite lost its impact.  Wanderer had used enough stealth boys to know when she was about out of time; her fingers and toes tingled, be it of trepidation or the effects of the device beginning to wear off.  One arm snaked down to the satchel slung over her shoulder, the fabric felt limp in her hand.

The stealth boy that was wearing off was the last Wanderer had on her.  Knowing Deacon, he didn’t have any more than she did.

One swept glance would reveal that they were right in the middle of a Brotherhood perimeter camp at the fringe of the Boston airport. The campfire sat a couple of inches to the right of Wanderer, like a giant, neon beacon that screamed ‘ _Railroad spies, see here!_ ’  In moments like this, Wanderer felt a strange sort of levity; it was comedic, like in the old, slapstick comedies, where the main character would get squished by the dangling piano overhead – everyone saw it coming coming.

It was like that; she knew what was coming, could feel bits and pieces of herself coming to, could  _see_  bits and pieces of Deacon as they shimmered tentatively into view. An elbow here, an ankle there, so fleeting a Scribe may have shaken their head, thinking it was exhaustion or the heat that brought about such visions.  

Then, seemingly out of thin air, Wanderer and Deacon appeared in the Brotherhood camp.  Six sets of eyes snapped to them, and despite the tensions that pulled Wanderer taut like a marionette doll, her stomach had settled.  She knew what was coming, remember?

Deacon sighed loudly from beside her and crossed his arms.  The sunglasses he always wore hid his eyes from her, but she knew he was meeting the Brotherhood Knight’s gazes haughtily from behind the tinted plastic.

“So, guys…come here often?” Deacon’s voice was casual, as if he were chatting someone up at the bar.

The campfire writhed beside them, tossing shadows around the enclosed airport terminal, and making it look a quarter of the size it actually was.  Past the inked perimeter, Wanderer spotted a breakage in the static shadows; a door in the expanse of wall.  Is that where C0-16 was being held?  There was a glorious moment of silence, as a handful of guns were unholstered.  This one second, stretched like taffy as Wanderer’s hand found the handle of her blade, sheathed at her back.  Deacon’s grip had found his pistol, and the corner of his mouth quirked up.  It made it easier for him, she thought, to smile and pretend it was just cracking a couple of knuckleheads together.  

Then commotion exploded in the ring of people as the first shots rang out.  

“Ad Victorium!”

Wanderer rolled her eyes.  It was like Maxson mass produced Brotherhood pull-string dolls, except instead of pulling a string, all you had to do was exist within a five-mile radius, for them to prattle off their catchphrase.  

Ignoring the spray of bullets and the fear they instilled in her, Wanderer lunged forward, sword in hand.  The handle fit perfectly in her small hand; a remnant of a Chinese officer, pre-war.  Now it saw war again, as it massacred the meshed fibers of the Brotherhood uniforms. They’d caught the Brotherhood at their less prepared; thankfully, there were only two Knights in power armor. Wanderer’s moves were precise on the less armored; hitting anywhere but the head.  This was no accident.  

The blade parted the fabric easily, and Wanderer steadied herself for the slivers of blood that bloomed where metal had been. Crimson streaked their arms as Wanderer undid the sleeves of their flight suits.   Eventually, the gun clattered from the Knight’s hands onto the concrete.  Wanderer kicked it out of their reach, before scooping it up into her own arms, and tucking it into the waistband of her trousers.  Effectively declawed, Wanderer left the Knight.  

Sirens blared in the distance, and Wanderer spotted two Knights inching closer to Deacon, who alternated in shooting, and throwing punches.  She had to urge herself to go to him; it was easy to get lost in his movements, the experience and practice in them obvious to her eyes.  She’d been at his side that long.

Wanderer kept her footsteps whispered as she crept up behind the Knights.  If Deacon saw her approach, he made no indication of it.  The element of surprise was necessary if they were to finish this scuffle quickly; the other three Brotherhood soldiers must’ve gone to fetch the cavalry.  Wanderer raised her arms above her head, gathering power.  The shadow of her looming stance had the Knight in front of her turning on his heel.  He had a moment to show his surprise before she brought the butt of her sword down upon his head, hard.  He piled at her feet like a landslide spilling stone.  The other Knight turned to his fallen brother, and Deacon used this opportunity to strike, quick as a whip.  He threw his arm out to the side, following Wanderer’s bloodless attack in suite, and pulled his gun through the air, bringing his hand and gun, melded together in a death grip, across the Knight’s face.  An inflamed shadow was already spreading across his face by the time he hit the ground.

“My hero,” Deacon grinned, holstering his pistol with one hand, and bringing his other theatrically to his brow.

“C’mon, we’ve got to go,” Wanderer urged in a low voice, hazarding a glance towards the searching lights, and the trample of bootfall in the distance.

Deacon relented to her grip at the bend of his elbow.

“I know, Wanderer,” he said as they both broke into a run towards the door she had spotted earlier, “this isn’t my first rodeo.”

“That doesn’t mean it can’t be your last.”

As luck would have it, the door was unlocked.  It was strange for something to go easily for them, behind Brotherhood walls, but then again, how much safer could one lock make a prison cell when it was already nested firmly inside an armed compound?

Deacon snorted as metal fell away from their fingertips.  Wanderer knew he wanted to say something more in retaliation, but the skittering of something further into the shadow dampened corners of the cramped room, cut him off.

“Hello?” Wanderer called out, “C0-16? Is that you?”

Shuddered breath responded from an invisible body.

“We’re friends,” she continued, “from the Railroad.”

“T-The Railroad sent you?”

Something lurched in the shadows, and then light bathed a haggard looking face, coveting its own collection of bruises and scrapes.

“They did.  We’re here to bust you out.”

Pupils so dilated they eclipsed C0-16’s blue irises, searched Deacon and Wanderer.

“We took care of your buddies over there,” Deacon jerked his chin, “But we have to go and fast, because it looks like they’ve sent for the welcoming committee.”

C0-16 whimpered.

“Can you walk?” Wanderer reached out to the synth as he lurched away.  Could he run?

“Y-ye- “

A handful of men’s voices shattered the relative safety of their rendezvous.

“We’ve got to go!”

The trio took off running, with Deacon and Wanderer flanking C0-16.  No one looked back as they left the Airport as far behind as they could.  Air scraped at the insides of Wanderer’s lungs in its haste to replenish her lungs, her heart beat against her ribs like a caged animal.

“Are you alright?” Deacon muttered to C0-16’s heels as they kicked up dust.

“Yes!” the synth squeaked, the wetness that streaked his face a pelting rain protesting his meager assurance.

Deacon’s limpid eyes found Wanderer from behind his sunglasses, and she felt her face burn, despite how the wind caressed it in her frenzied motion.  He hadn’t been talking to their target.  Wanderer nodded, small and barely perceptible behind the jerkiness of her gait.  

“You?” she puffed, half hoping her concern would be left in their tracks.

“Yeah.”

Relief flooded her and they kept running.  By the time the Boston Airport was nothing more than a cluster of pinpricks of light, the sound of raised voices long dissolved by the distance between them, the trio was thoroughly spent.  The moon had reached its apex in the navy enfolds of Lady Night’s dress as they hobbled to the dark, looming structure that had at one point been just a silhouetted bead on the horizon.  

Up close, the structure stood tall, and smooth. Radiation had chewed through patches of metal in charred, blackened bursts, but Wanderer could tell that prior to that, there had been a somewhat fancy, chrome finish.  A blocky overhand jutted out from the front, the underside nesting an uncountable number of light bulbs that were mostly broken.  A sign that had once dazzled in its striking neon hues now looked dismal and flat as it stated the establishment’s name;  _Oracle Theater._

C0-16 balked at the entrance, as if something stalked them from the empty box office.  

“It’s okay,” Wanderer coaxed, “this place will make for a good stopping place for the night.”

“The  _whole_  night?”

Deacon’s arm came to clasp chummily around C0-16’s shoulders, jostling him as if trying to shirk the synth’s fears like a couple of sticky cobwebs.

“You’ve got two Railroad heavies with you; you’re safer than most in the Commonwealth right now.”

The prominent frown remained on C0-16’s face, but his feet moved obediently as Deacon herded him inside.  Wanderer followed, her hand absentmindedly finding the handle of her blade again, just in case.

The lobby seemed to frighten C0-16 less once bathed in enough lantern light.  Within the first hour, he’d set up his sleeping roll behind what once was a well-stocked concessions counter and had just as quickly began drifting off into a light sleep.  

This surprised Wanderer; sleep had evaded her like the plague during her first few weeks in the Commonwealth.  Then again, she was usually one to look upon her troubles. She liked them to stay where she could see them, where they couldn’t sneak up on her, C0 struck her as the sort who’d be more content burying his head in the sand, so long as he didn’t have to look into death’s eyes as it took him.  

With C0-16 settled for the night, Wanderer joined Deacon out beneath the overhang, where he was sitting beneath the ticket counter at the box office, smoking a cigarette.  His sunglasses were hooked and folded at the neckline of his shirt. Wanderer felt her stomach flutter at the rare sight of his uninhibited eyes.  Even in all her time of traveling with him, she’d seldom saw him like this.

“Hell of a place to set up camp for the night,” Deacon remarked, his cigarette stinted between two fingers as Wanderer took a seat next to him.

The ticket booth was only so wide, and so she had to sit closer to Deacon than she normally might, to ensure she could lean against it too.  She half expected him to scoot over to accommodate her, but he seemed content even as the side of her arm pressed against the side of his own.  

“Yeah,”

They were quiet for a few moments, and Deacon took another slow puff of his cigarette.

“You know,” Wanderer scoffed, “I had wanted to see that,” she raised her finger to point to a movie poster still mounted on a crumbling wall.  “It was still playing the day the bombs dropped, and I never got around to seeing it before.”

“What was it about?”

Wanderer laughed openly now.

“It was just one of those hokey science fiction movies about the future – you know, flying cars, jetpacks, the whole shebang.”

Wanderer could feel Deacon’s eyes on her even as her laugh narrowed hers to slits.  How wrong Hollywood had been.  The only cars that went flying now were the ones the spare super mutant hurled in the heat of a firefight.  

“So does the Commonwealth live up to your expectations?”

“Turns out there are things better than jetpacks.”

The words were out of Wanderer’s mouth before her brain could’ve properly filtered them.

“Oh definitely,” Deacon agreed sarcastically, “who needs jetpacks when we have tons of nifty things like giant, mutated lizards with a penchant for blood, civil war, and let’s not forget – cool spy names.”

Wanderer laughed as pink spots danced at the apples of her cheeks.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but it’s really…not that bad,” she trailed off.

Her voice disappeared into the sucking silence, like a sinking boat disappeared into water.  Wanderer looked to Deacon and found that he was already watching her. She steeled herself against the shudder that threatened to run up her spine; his eyes were intense - she was almost grateful he usually preferred sunglasses.  Heat seeped through the thin material of Deacon’s white t-shirt and blistered against Wanderer’s skin.  Warmth suffused her, creeping up to her throat, and right then, she almost felt like she was struggling to keep her head above water herself.  She didn’t really much mind it though; the heat, the warmth, it was almost pleasant, like sitting close to a campfire.  Wanderer tried to remember if she’d ever felt like this before the bombs dropped, but nothing stuck out in her mind.

She clung to his warmth as long as she could, as his cigarette flickered a couple of times, smoldering slowly, and then dying as he crushed the tip into the ground.

-          -     -

The next morning, breakfast was a mirelurk broth heated over a tentative cooking fire right outside the theater.  Wanderer, Deacon, and C0-16 huddled around it, and Wanderer stirred the pot every so often as the concoction was brought to a quiet simmer.  C0-16 had been quiet this morning – that wasn’t terribly surprising.  Rarely did Deacon and Wanderer get pickups that were incredibly social; she assumed circumstances hadn’t provided ample conditions for sharpening communication skills, nor did their refugee status put them in such a mood.  That’s why it surprised them both when C0-16 piped up, as he nursed his breakfast between two, shaky hands.

“I…have a family.”

Wanderer’s and Deacon’s faces snapped up in twin reflections of shock.  C0-16 swallowed thickly, before meeting their looks wearily.

“We all escaped together, but,” C0’s face hardened, “they went south, and I hung back to collect supplies, which is how the Brotherhood found me.”

“South?” Deacon pressed, “that leaves…a lot of the Commonwealth as open game.”

C0 shook his head.

“No, see, there’s a decommissioned lighthouse that we agreed on as our meeting place,” the synth hesitated, “and I know you guys were only sent to help me, but…I’d like to go there.  I  _need_  to find my family.”

Deacon looked thoughtful, and Wanderer knew anyone would struggle to get a concise answer from him like that.

“Of course,” she said hurriedly, “it’s good that you told us.  We agree –“ her gaze flicked back to her partner, who remained silent, “- we need to recover them as well.”

Breakfast was mostly silent from then on, the deep furrow at C0’s brow faded, and soon they were on the road again, making the long trek south to the coast.  The trip had started off about as quiet as breakfast had been, save for the light tromping of the trio’s footsteps, and Travis Miles’ tinny voice playing the Commonwealth’s favorites on the radio.  Wanderer’s voice did well to mask the grating squawk of Diamond City Radio, though Deacon would’ve felt strange relishing it the way he meant to.  It helped that he’d joined in too, with his own clumsy rendition of  _Undecided_.  

The way Wanderer giggled at his singing was almost worth hearing the way he fumbled whilst she could carry a tune.  He trailed off, content to let her carry it the rest of the way.  

Her voice tapered off as a distant, silhouetted prong broke up the foggy slope of the horizon.  As if crossing some invisible line into ‘serious-business’ territory, Travis’ voice on the radio grew scattered and scratched before being swallowed up by the crackling sound of dead air.  

Wanderer swallowed nervously as the thought clung to her like the newfound heaviness around them,  _the air was dead here._ Her hands swiped alongside the length of her forearms; she felt rubbery, it looked as if it was about to rain and the muggy wetness in the air had chilled her skin.  Goosebumps turned her to stone and made her hair stand up on end.  

Apprehension strained the trio’s gait as the distant structure grew increasingly lighthouse shaped.  By the time it was sufficiently recognizable, the galivanting shadows of monkeying men could be seen, waving their guns and throwing their weight around. A couple of stray hoots and hollers shattered the fragile quiet that had gathered – spilling ice water into the bloodstreams of synths and Railroad agents alike.

“God…they’re everywhere,” C0 muttered, worry creasing his face as he watched the shadows shift against white stone, vicious shadow puppets telling a story that none of them rather wanted to hear the ending to.

“We should start searching for your family as soon as possible – and as discreetly as possible,” Wanderer raised a steadying hand to C0’s shoulder, “how many are there?”

“Two.  My wife, Yale, and my daughter, Deni.”

Deacon’s face was uncharacteristically grim.

“It’ll be difficult without Stealth Boys.”

“But not impossible,” Wanderer added quickly, with a glance towards C0.

“Not impossible,” Deacon relented, with a sigh.

They reached the lighthouse, water seeping in through the worn leather of their shoes and squelching between their toes. Wanderer’s heart seized every time a wet noise made it back to her ears; if she could hear their waterlogged footsteps, surely the raiders could as well, right?  The alarmed sound of their catching never came though; instead just more drunken exaggerations and brash claims.  

The campfire was far enough from the lighthouse that the entrance narrowly evaded the revealing bubble of light.  Wanderer and Deacon used this opportunity to slink in through the doorway, their bodies pressed flat against the stone bricks. C0 followed closely in their wake, his body less assured.

Their eyes already well adjusted to the dark, they began their sweep.  Thankfully, lighthouses, while stretching tall, had relatively small levels, that only got smaller, and as such, easier to search the higher they crept up.  The downside?  The higher up they went, the more difficult it would be to escape should they get caught.  Finding no trace of woman or child, the trio climbed higher and higher before experiencing this terrible truth out for themselves after creeping up eight flights of stairs.

As it turned out, not all the raiders had partaken in a night of debauchery; some in fact, had decided to tuck in early for the night – a fact neither Deacon nor Wanderer had taken into account.  Their failure to notice such a detail stared them in the face in the form of a raider’s tired dazedness as he blinked a few times, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and proceeded to snarl at his newfound discovery.

“My, my, what have we here?”

Shit.

Without thinking, Wanderer’s fist lunged out and clipped the grizzled man by the jaw.  He dropped like a dead weight, with a tight ‘ _oof_!’ pushed between his teeth.  A stunned silence radiated from the darkened walls of the lighthouse and C0’s face blanched to a mask of horror.  Deacon was unreadable, the emptiness in his reaction mingling with the shadows cast across his face, but Wanderer could tell from rigidness of his slinking form that he was tense.

“Did you hear that?” someone asked from below, with suspicions that pricked Wanderer like her stomach was churning broken glass.

Wanderer’s gaze dropped just in time to spot a head poke in through the lighthouse’s entrance way.  Even with the layers of grated metal that separated them, she could  _feel_  their eyes meet.  A mutual understanding was established; they had been detected.

At that same time, a deliberate rhythm sounded from above, descending to them.  They were caught from above, so below.  Wanderer’s eyes met Deacon’s, and even through the darkness she could read the abyss’ cold, corpse lips;  _what do we do_?

“Someone’s here!”

“ _Here_!” the raider in bed bellowed, one beefy hand reaching up to nurse his swelling jaw.

C0 threw an elbow towards his face and quieted him.

Wanderer grimaced; this had to have been their least successful stealth mission by  _far_.  They’d used up all their Stealth Boys and still managed to get themselves caught twice. She had time to be vaguely amused by this before raider silhouettes encroached on her and she felt her fists make contact again.  Adrenaline flashed through her hot first, then cold.  She’d engaged with raiders many times, both before and after joining the Railroad, but this fight felt riskier.  Perhaps it was the climbing height of the lighthouse – a battle suspended in air – or the fact that there was still no sign of C0’s wife or child, but something sour rotted near them, and Wanderer felt she and Deacon would be discovering its decaying carcass soon enough.

At the thought of her partner, she looked to him in time to see him land a swift blow to a raider coming from the stairs above them, before dumping him over the side of the railing.  Wanderer felt her nerves and stomach knot in her like someone was cinching her tight, tying her up with her fears, and then the sound of a man’s dead weight hitting the ground with a sickening thud reached her ears. Wanderer’s stomach flipped and she turned her back to the railing, determined to look anywhere but over the edge, much as her curiosity pleaded with her.  

C0 was wrestling with a raider on the platform below; the synth was stocky, and not without his good instincts, but he still didn’t know what it was to truly choose his life before another’s, and Wanderer knew, much as she disliked this fact herself, that he’d lose as a result. She descended the stairs in double time to reach him, feeling the flanking presence of Deacon join her as she did so.  The threats from above were neutralized – they could work their way down from here.

When they reached C0, his arms were no longer wrapped around the brutish looking raider before him, rather his own arms were held up in begging surrender.  It was then that Wanderer’s eyes caught the glint of a gun’s barrel, peeking out from the calloused grip of its wielder, and pointing at C0’s face.  This wasn’t a rare encounter in the Commonwealth but seeing it from the powerlessness of a third-party’s perspective made Wanderer’s heart seize against her ribs, as if it were attempting to thrust it’s way between C0 and the gun.

Deacon seemed to have similar sentiments.

Wanderer threw her own arms out too late, as she knew she would.  The shot rang out in perfect synchronicity to how Deacon lunged for the raider’s grip. He fell as easily as a heavy stone, and Wanderer fell onto the man who’d pulled the trigger with predatory intent. Her nails dug deafly into the man’s flesh; her eyes unseeing around the red haze as she hoisted him over the railing and dumped him over the side too.  C0 on the other hand, grew into his stocky build and good instincts, finishing off the two remaining raiders below.  Wanderer went to Deacon’s crumpled form; his arm was thrown over his side, concealing the hemorrhaging trauma that leaked his blood into the grate around him.  Rolling him fully on his back, Wanderer spotted the gunshot wound immediately.

A bright crimson bloodstain blossomed on the right side of his gut, the center staring out in a grisly mess of torn t-shirt, and viscera like a sinister, unblinking pupil.  A choked noise left Wanderer, and instinctively, she pressed her hands to the wound.  Deacon’s body shifted under her impact and then moved no more.  His flesh was slick from blood, and outside of the radius of red smear, white as a sheet.  

Ice crusted in Wanderer’s chest, and it wasn’t until small, furtive gasps of breath came from her mouth, and hot tears spattered at her shaking grip, that she realized she was crying.  All the same, she didn’t much care.  Wanderer pressed harder.

“Please,” she sobbed raggedly, “ _please!_ ”

Beads of blood gathered in the grooves of her hands, collecting; she didn’t know what was worse, having him on her fingers, or having him slip right through them.

Time seemed to slow in Wanderer’s helplessness. The blood kept flowing, and yet the dull throbbing of Deacon’s life ebbing away beneath the pads of her fingers seemed to drag, like it was waiting to capture his death and her despair and feed it back into the flow of eternity.

Wanderer’s face felt hot and puffy, flashes of heat streaking down her face in rivulets of tears.  Through her bleary gaze, she found two faces ascending the winding stairs to her platform.  Her heart was too heavy to feel appropriate surprise.

C0’s movements were stuttered as he approached them, his nervousness was back with a vengeance it seemed, as if he were afraid Wanderer might cover herself in his blood next.  The man beside him was solemn, his face too riddled with the creases of age, to fit any of C0’s juvenile restlessness on it.  Wanderer glowered at the both of them.

“Aye, you did well in applying pressure.  Careful not to move him now,” the man crouched beside them, his movements more fluid than Wanderer expected.

Her body bowed over his; the meager protection all she had to offer with her hands busied at his wound.  She tried to make her face stone, like one of those gargoyles on the roofs of old gothic buildings – also made to scare away nefarious spirits.  Her face couldn’t muster the heat of a snarl though, and so Wanderer’s mouth fell into a flat, tired line.

The stranger studied her for a few moments, appraising her protective stance over Deacon.

“If I wanted you dead, I could just let your friend there bleed out, and take care of you later,” the corner of his shaggy mustache twitched, and Wanderer could tell he was half-smiling now, beneath it, “something tells me this one,” he gestured towards C0, who flinched, “won’t pose much of a threat either.”

Wanderer’s face remained unchanging; her bleakness chiseled in stone.

“Seriously.  Listen to me, I can help.  Keep holding pressure, while I get out the Stimpaks,” he brought the leather satchel slung across his chest to the front, and began rummaging through it, seemingly content as Wanderer remained frozen.  

He procured a couple of Stimpaks, and while she didn’t show it, Wanderer was grateful the stranger carried a sort of help she recognized.  This small bit of trust allowed her to relent as the man stuck the needled tip into Deacon’s arm and pressed the syringe top down.  It sunk down with a whispered hiss, a piston in slow motion powering life back into her partner.  All eyes were on Deacon for a couple of minutes, and no one spoke, afraid that a careless word might be enough to push the man one way or the other, as he teetered on the brink of life and death.

When the stranger spoke again, Deacon still hadn’t moved but the phantom of a peach tinge seemed to return to his skin.  If a corpse had donned Deacon’s coloring now, the hairs on the back of a mortician’s neck would’ve stood on end.

“One should be enough,” the stranger nodded approvingly at his handiwork, “although, he probably won’t regain his strength until morning.”

He looked to Wanderer, who’s hands were crusted in Deacon’s blood, but thankfully, not dripping anymore.

“You can take your hands away now.”

Wanderer’s hands were trembling as she obliged, but luckily, the stranger had been right; the patch of viscera at Deacon’s abdomen did not grow.

Too afraid to move him in his fragile state, they settled for bringing the pillow and blankets from the first raider’s cot down to where Deacon was, easing his head atop the pillow, and tucking him in so that he might evade a chill as he slept.  Down at the ground floor, Wanderer and the stranger – Hume, as he turned out to be called – sat with C0 around veiled lanternlight.  Despite their earlier victory, they had very little fight leftover between the three of them if any others were to stumble upon them.

“What did you say your name was?” Hume asked gruffly, as he settled in against a stack of crates.

“I didn’t.  You can call me Wanderer.”

Hume whistled, “Right then, Wanderer, your husband’s a lucky man.  I’ve seen many men succumb to injuries less abrasive than his own.”

“He’s  _not_  my husband,” Wanderer bristled.

She hated the steel that glinted in her rebuke; it was the idea of her husband, not Deacon himself that brought it.  

Hume studied her for a moment, before nodding. It felt more like a consolation prize than earnest belief.

“Hmph.  Could’ve fooled me.”

Wanderer shrugged, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s no one I trust more – he,” her eyes flicked briefly upwards, “would make a great… _partner_.  It’s just, I’ve done that whole thing before; the marriage thing, that is.  It didn’t…” Wanderer’s brow furrowed as her tongue searched for the words she suddenly needed to recall, “it wasn’t…”

When she had been married to Nate, she’d had plenty of time to consider all the ways their marriage had let her down, all the ways he had.  She could’ve written a manual to the dysfunctional marriage.  Now, suddenly, all those thoughts escaped her, like they’d been part of another life entirely.  In some ways, they had been.

Hume shook his head, his hand raising to cut her off.

“I get it.  You don’t have to explain yourself.  But trust me when I say a bad marriage comes from a bad partner; it doesn’t just happen on its own.”

Wanderer set her eyes on the halo of lantern light that bathed them, allowing only herself to see the revelations it brought in the wake of Hume’s words.

No one said a word.

The lantern would flicker every so often, and break the tenuous quiet with a tired hiccup within the bulb, but it was this that broke it, and this only.

Several serpentine twists of the stairs above, Deacon lay, his cheeks burning with new life and then some, eyes wide open. Sound bounced off the cracked stone of the lighthouse walls like light refracted off metal, it reached his ears at a skip and a hop.  

Despite the juvenile blush he sported, Deacon felt Wanderer’s sentiments as if they were his own.  There was no one else he’d trust more, in anything.  But…Barbara loomed over his shoulder, jockeying for his failure at a happy ending as Nate loomed over his partner’s.  He shut his eyes again but could not let the blackness he succumbed to erase the strange stirrings Wanderer’s voice had brought up inside him.

-          -     -

The clattering of metal on stone jerked Wanderer from her tentative sleep.  Her eyes shot open, and immediate warmth seized her.  Deacon was rummaging through the stacks of crates, mustering a sort of breakfast, no doubt.  He was one of those types to eat a lot and stay skinny.  Wanderer had gone green with envy before, now, relief had her walking on clouds.

Sitting up, she pushed a lock of tousled hair from her face.  At the faint rustling of movement, Deacon caught himself mid-dig, and turned to face her.

“’Morning, ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”

Wanderer snorted, accepting his playful jab as an idle hand twisted self-consciously at a coil of hair.

“You’re one to talk.  You sleep like the dead, erhm…half-dead?”

Her lips curved into a wry smile, but the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes were stiff in their refusal at her attempt at humor.

“I didn’t sleep the whole night through actually,” he sighed, and reached up to rub the back of his neck.  Wanderer watched the uncharacteristic seriousness settled about him, like a snow in July.  “Your voice carries, as it turns out.”

Wanderer’s throat tightened, and the laugh she managed sounded strangled.

“Didn’t mean to keep you up, it must’ve been the bourbon.”

This had been the driest raider camp they’d found by far, and both of them knew it.  This was most likely because the inhabitants had probably gorged themselves of their stock before Deacon and Wanderer showed up.

“Listen, I…” he started, his voice suspended in the fears that had kept the words tightly inside him for the past year, “I’m not going to claim I’m a good man, but…I’d like to think I can be good for you. Or, I don’t know, at least be good with you.  Working with you has made me better.  Made me kinder and more compassionate,” Deacon’s eyes peeked out from behind his sunglasses, and Wanderer had to fight the shiver that traipsed her spine, “I’m just saying, I like being your partner, and I think our  _partnership_  is…a good thing.”

They surveyed each other for a couple of moments, iron eyes clashing like unrelenting swords.  Pink spots floated high upon Wanderer’s cheekbones, but she pressed her mouth into a thin line, and nodded earnestly.

“I agree,” she said in a quiet voice.

He studied her for a bit and then drew closer. Wanderer felt very small then, watching with eyes as wide as dinnerplates as he did so.  The sunglasses lost their guardedness at this proximity, and Wanderer’s joints locked, entranced to such a degree, she could only watch to see what her partner would do next.  When she felt a warm touch at her elbow, she startled in his newfound grip, launching her heart into a vaulting sprint.  Her breathing fastened, as if she  _had_  just taken a run, and when Deacon’s face hovered just a few inches away from her own, she had half a mind that he did too.  His eyes flicked down to her lips, then back up to hers again – asking for permission.

Wanderer could only reach her own hands up to curl atop his shoulders; she had meant to bring them to his face but didn’t seem to be able to.  Heat seared her as he leaned in, lips first, and her eyes fluttered shut as he made impact.

His lips were softer than she’d thought.  Strong too.  Moving against her gently at first, she let herself meld to the shape of his mouth, lost in his arms, and bonded to his firm attentions.  The kiss crescendoed from there, and it was then Wanderer’s hands smoothed up the column of his neck to grasp his jaw, now anchoring him back to her.  The scratch of stubble brought a gasp out of her, and Deacon’s grip tightened, crushing her to his chest.

It was the heavy sound of boots on metal that broke them apart.  When C0 had rounded the bottom of the lighthouse’s winding stairs, Wanderer was straightening her shirt, her face flushed with the fever of the kiss still. Deacon’s arms were crossed against his chest, his sunglasses giving him some privacy as he basked in its afterglow. If C0 noticed the crackling tension in the room, he didn’t care.

“They weren’t here,” his voice wavered, despite the angry edge it carried, “Yale and Deni.”

“The search isn’t over,” Wanderer reassured, “but we should go back to Railroad headquarters first.”

C0 recoiled visibly.  She said they weren’t giving up, but the sentiment sounded a lot like they were heading back home with their tails between their legs.

“The Railroad will have more resources for us to use that may help in finding your family,” Deacon said, noticing the synth’s reaction.

His eyes met Wanderer’s again briefly, mirroring her uncertainty.  The Railroad also had connections to memory wiping services in the case that his family didn’t turn up at all.

A shudder threatened to shatter the peace Wanderer kept on her face.  She didn’t much want to think of the possibility that Yale or Deni had met an undoubtedly unpleasant end, nor did the prospects of wiping them from existence appeal to her either.

The sun was high in a cloudless, sapphire sky when C0, Deacon, and Wanderer continued on the road again.  She walked so closely that she could practically feel her arm brush his, and so she barely noticed when his hand slipped into hers.  It was like that with them; he knew the thoughts in her head without her having to say them, knew what call she’d make before she did at times.  They existed in such seamless synchronicity that by the time she realized how close he was, she’d long forgotten to draw a line in the sand.

Wanderer let her hand remain in his as they worked their way back home, lest she never find a distance between them, again.


End file.
